


A How-To-Adult Handbook

by littleaviatrix



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen, a mess of oc fic featuring others' ocs and too many shenanigans, lots of poor choices really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-02 07:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6557509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleaviatrix/pseuds/littleaviatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study on managing and maneuvering in a world of adventurers and a bit too much chaos for anyone who doesn't in fact wield a massive blessed sword and understand definitive faction ties, brought to you by a tailor who thinks that "moving on" is some type of stitch, a walking fire hazard of a mage, an engineer who can fix everything but his own problems, a painfully obvious dead spy, and a rather unholy priest. But they know what they're doing. Sometimes. Mostly. </p><p>Not ever, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Science of Running Away and Readjustment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everett is not a runaway, not at all, but he does maybe slip off to Gilneas City at sixteen on his own without telling his parents. For no particular reason. Not one like "he accidentally destroyed his family's fishing boat." 
> 
> Backstory, post-Northgate Rebellion.

Scarlett meets him at the gates.

 

She meets Everett at the gates, because even the drive of someone who bolted from home at the first opportunity isn’t enough to somehow give them any sense of direction in a big city, and especially not one with too many people and too many tall buildings and a heavy layer of smog from factories that he’s only ever heard about. Keel doesn’t have factories; it’s too small, too cramped, too single-minded. Keel has its priorities. It’s stubborn about them.

He should have been able to get along with Keel.

Fog and grey and dull loom over his head, and when he glances up, so does the tower of the cathedral. It’s his only landmark, and really the only structure that stands out, stained glass in a sea of smog. Still, he’s lost, and doesn’t dare to move.

But then a bony elbow knocks his, and then, “Shit, _there_ you are.”

Ev turns and blinks, then blinks again. He knows it’s Scarlett; there’s the same notch along her jaw that he knows is from the time that she tripped and skidded right into the steps of her house, chin first. There’s the same long hair, the same gangly limbs, but everything else is -- unsettling. She’s smaller. The set of her shoulders is less cocky, instead more hunched, more nervous.

There’s a moment, a dreadfully long moment, before they speak where their eyes flick up and down, taking the other in -- her face hadn’t been that thin when he saw her last, her joints hadn’t been that pronounced, and Light knows that they stuck out before.

He knows that he doesn’t look any more familiar than she does. The same swinging braid that she and his brothers always liked to tug on is gone, seared off. He’s stolen clothes from Jai; his style of shirt and trousers, especially ones that hang so large and loose on him, is more forgiving toward the mess of bandages and bruises. Heavy purple curves beneath his eyes. Ev knows that he looks like a wreck.

He is, for a lack of more scientific terminology, a wreck.

But it doesn’t matter, because then their elbows are knocking together again and their foreheads are clunking as they tug each other into an awkward embrace. They’re not quite in sync the way they always have been, but he hardly notices. Heavy gauze meets the fabric of a newly-issued tabard, and they both hiccup and suddenly there’s tears, so many tears, and she’s pinching his cheeks and he’s choking out a laugh and a sob all in one, and--

“Holy shit,” she finally breathes out, and pulls back to hold him at arm’s length, careful to hold onto his upper arms, far above where his sleeves meet bandages. “You’re good? It’s been ages, it’s -- you’re so tall, when the fuck’d that happen?”

“I don’t know,” he answers, and the words are more of an awkward, shaky laugh than an actual spoken sentence. She just kisses his forehead. He laughs again, and then draws his shoulder up to wipe his cheek with his sleeve. “I’m good. But you’re home, are you -- are you..?”

“Fine,” she says, a bit too quickly to be convincing, but neither of them press at the other’s vague answers. Two years is a long time, but they haven’t forgotten how to read each other.

Not yet. Not ever. They know when to let things go, at least for a bit.  

“You got all your things?” She clears her throat before asking, and glances down at the satchel hanging at his side. The edges of too many books poke out of the side and render it misshapen and almost awkwardly pointy.

He just nods in reply. He has a small bag of coins -- his and Jai’s savings put together, because he’s the best brother -- and Rasik’s old clothes that he nicked from the bottom of his dresser, and his pens and notes. Ev’s still mostly convinced that being a runaway does sort of guarantee that a person won’t be entirely prepared, but he thinks that he’s -- oh. He forgot to pack socks. 

“I think so,” he finally adds, and then holds his breath a moment, remembering what it is that he had meant to bring up. “Um, you got my last letter, right..?”

His last letter, where his hand shook writing it, and his letters were crooked, but he spelled out a name, in bolder letters than usual. E-v-e-r-e-t-t.

She nods, and ruffles his hair, before stretching up to kiss his forehead again. “Yeah, Everett, I got it.”

He left his anatomy textbook at home, because he could either bring that one or fit another book on alchemy into his bag. Still, he’s certain that his heart swells, when she calls him by name. It must be possible, for a person’s heart to do that. He's not sure of a lot of things, not really, but now he's sure of that.

And then he’s crying again, and now Scarlett is wiping his eyes, as gently as she can with her sleeve.

“Let’s just get you home, yeah?” Her hand still holds his arm, as they walk, steadier than he knows that she feels, but it’s comforting. The cobbles beneath the worn soles of his shoes are foreign, but already he’s starting to feel like he could learn it better than he ever knew Keel.

Ev takes in a shaky breath and wipes his eyes one more time before he stares up,  _ up  _ at the stained glass spire of the cathedral. He wonders just how he couldn’t see it, all the way from Keel Harbor. It’s massive. Bigger than anything he’s ever seen before.

And so is the rest of the city, he learns as she leads him along. She points out shops and other points of interest as they go, with small tilts of her head and a not so small voice. They cross a stone bridge, over wood and garbage swimming in a shallow canal, and she gestures ahead at a building.

“Bookstore,” she says, and his eyes widen. She laughs, and laughs more, when he drags his feet to try and poke his head in by the window.

He’s exhausted, so exhausted, but he’s awake enough to at least make some observations, albeit small ones. He organizes them into a mental list.

  1. Keel Harbor is large, supposedly bigger than whatever village his parents come from back far up north, but it’s nowhere near as big as Gilneas City. The streets seem as if they could swallow him whole.
  2. The buildings huddle together, wet and grey, the same way that the people crowding the streets do.
  3. Some people stare -- at the ill fit of his clothes, at his arms, at his cheeks, which must be thinner now. But when he looks, and catches their eye, he realizes that it’s because they have the same hollowed cheeks, or mess of bandages, or they’re missing a limb. The civil war ended a month ago. It isn’t really over.
  4. Scarlett’s grip on his shoulder tightens, whenever that happens, as if she realizes too. He stops to count each of her fingers, when they pass a guard with a missing right hand.
  5. She tells him that the cluster of streets lined with small shops and tenement buildings, where they are now, is Merchant Square. The streets seem to get narrower and narrower. He can’t tell if it’s suffocating or a relief, that perhaps the city isn’t so wide after all.
  6. They pass a small tent, where somebody is selling pastries. Jai would have liked those.



“Down this way,” Scarlett says, and he snaps out of his own disorganized mental attempts at categorization. She leads them down a side street, and then another, where suddenly the cobbles are as littered with garbage and broken down carts and crates as the actual Square was with people. He nearly trips over one of the loose planks of wood, and she catches him and tugs him to the side.

He realizes, only after he nearly swerves into them again, that Scarlett meant to tug him away from a stranger with a too-heavy coat, and a poorly disguised glint of steel at their side, taking coin from another stranger. Scarlett yanks him along before he can catch what exactly the money is being exchanged for.

Somewhere ahead, another crate clatters to the street, and raised voices echo, and her grip on his arm tightens. Her step quickens; Ev follows suit.

“‘S not so bad,” she says quietly, brows knitting together when she notices what has to be a blatantly alarmed look on his face. “Just -- busy in the evenings. That’s all.”

Ev nods, and pretends not to notice the sword still hanging heavy at her side.

They walk, huddled together and quickly, until finally Scarlett skids to a stop at a tenement building near the end of the street. It’s far taller than it is wide, indistinguishable from the rest populating the street save for one broken window on the third floor up. She nudges him, as he stares, and the reassuring smile that’s been on her face since they first turned down the street falters.

“‘S not so bad,” she repeats again, as if trying to convince herself this time rather than Ev, and then she tilts her head. She coughs, quiet and suddenly awkward. Ev tilts his head back, in the opposite direction. “Hey, so -- Oliver’s home. Y’know, my friend that wrote the letter?”

Right, her soldier friend, the one she lives with -- he knows Oliver, if only through two brief anecdotes, both only in letters. The sudden shift to her voice tells him that “Oliver” is synonymous with “a long story,” so he doesn’t press. He just nods. She’ll explain later.

The shift to her voice also whispers to him that maybe she hasn’t ever elaborated simply because she doesn’t know how to explain it herself.

“Just -- hey, so, uh, dunno how to say this. Try not to stare..? He’s alright, just still can’t move around much.” She tugs at her tabard, and his brows furrow in question. “Cannonballs are, uh, a real bitch.”

Oh. “He got..?”

“Yeah. More the blast, right? Dunno. Happened pretty fast. Anyways, it’s just…” Her chin ducks down, and something in his gut twists, when he realizes that it was something she saw, but then she just shrugs. “He’s alright, now. That’s what matters, yeah?”

Ev nods again, and she nudges his arm, as she steps inside, and then leads him up the first flight of stairs, and then the second. The steps creak and groan almost violently beneath them, and she makes a tiny shushing noise. “Make it seem like they’re gonna fall out from under you, yeah -- hey, you’ve got your nervous face, what’s up?”

The small crack to her voice tells him that he can’t answer truthfully, that he can’t tell her about how thinking about her anywhere in the vicinity of a cannon, or cannonballs, or arms of any sort makes him want to retch. So he takes in another deep breath, and mumbles out the next biggest worry on his mind.

“You’re sure that you don’t mind..? I mean, me staying with you?” He shifts his (very light) weight to the other foot, and the stair protests. Her eyes go wide at his words, and she nudges his arm again with her own. “I don’t want to be a--”

“You’re not a problem, not a burden, we’re glad you’re here, an’ you can be here as long as you want. Been wanting to show you the city for ages, and Oliver’s been wanting to meet you, I talk about you all the time. I’m just -- y’know, sorry that it’s not much. But we’ve got you a bed, and I set up a line, where we can hang clothes an’ shit, and we have a table. It’s all coming along alright.”

His shoulders drop with quiet relief, and a gangly arm drapes around him. He leans back into her. Suddenly, climbing the stairs -- two more flights, then -- weighs him down. The familiar burn to his lungs is back, but he ignores it. He thinks that he packed his cigarettes, at least.

He just hopes that he can afford to buy more, when he runs out, but that’s a worry for another time.

She stops on the third floor, at the second door, all greying wood. The knob is tarnished, and when she twists it, it’s unlocked. She nods for Ev to step inside, and then she’s right behind him.

The whole home is the size of his and Jai’s room. He realizes that her proud list of two beds, a table, and a string nailed at an odd angle from one wall to the other actually does constitute all of the furniture in the room. A few scraps of fabric -- bright yellow, then something heavier, and another kind that’s striped -- are tacked to the wall above the small stove. One bed, just a mattress on the floor, is pushed near the stove. The other rests just about a foot away.

Winter. He doesn’t need to ask. The single window is the one with the hole in it.

It’s small and it’s bare, but the man -- Oliver, must be Oliver -- propped up against the wall, one trouser leg pinned up at the hip, immediately perks up when he sees them enter. Scarlett’s shoulders relax, and she squeezes Ev’s arm.

Tacked to the wall opposite the door, just above the table pushed all the way against the wood, hangs a sign which, spelled out in large letters, reads “Welcome, Everett!”

For the third time that evening, Ev bursts into tears.

Scarlett and Oliver both freeze, but then she just shakes her head and -- gently, after another squeeze to his arm -- slides the strap of his bag off of his shoulder, and sets it down on the table.

“See, Oliver? This is what happens when you don’t bathe, you’re already scaring him off!” 

“Uncalled for!” He straightens up, and scoots, awkwardly, to the edge of the mattress. He’s small, very small, with an even smaller beard, and his skin is grey, just like the rest of the city. Scarlett had mentioned something about him being dwarven; that must explain the coloring. Ev rubs his eyes dry, and cracks a tiny smile. “The smell in here’s a joint effort, don’t listen to her. It’s really nice to finally meet you, Everett. Here, and this bed over here is yours, and we’re working on -- well, the rest of everything, but you can put your things wherever you’d like, when you want to unpack.”

Words flood his mind -- he means to speak with fully-formed sentences, proper speech, a cautiously deepened tone, but all that comes out is a mess of mumbling and a “thank you so much” repeated again and again.

“Ev, it’s not a problem, alright?” Scarlett crosses the few feet back across the room to ruffle Oliver’s mess of hair, who just laughs, and then perches on the edge of the mattress next to him. “It’ll be real good having you around again. And sometime tomorrow, after I’m off duty, I can take you to the library. And hey, you can sit, it’s your house. Room. Thing.”

“Back row on the right in the library is all alchemy stuff,” Oliver adds, as Ev slides down onto the spot next to Scarlett, tucking his legs beneath him. With all three of them, it’s a bit of an awkward fit, on such a narrow mattress -- hardly a mattress and more of a pallet -- but it works. It’ll work.

His bandages feel less heavy, now.

“Red mentioned something about asthma, too, and -- I don’t know if you need anything, but my grandmother is a medic. She has things for that, and she lives just a few streets down.” Idly, Oliver tugs at the place where all of the extra fabric of his trousers is folded up. “Just let us know if you need anything, at all, though, really! We’re still getting used to this whole -- this house thing. Adulthood. We’re not great at it.”

“Picked up firewood and antiseptic and everything but groceries, once.” 

“More than once.” 

“Shit, that’s true.” Scarlett shifts, so that her head is against Ev’s knees and her legs are half-stretched across Oliver’s lap and half-hanging off of the side of the mattress, the same way she used to with Ev and Jai. The familiarity of the motion turns his small smile into a grin. “Dead serious, though, help’s wanted.”

“Needed, more like.”

Ev stretches his fingers, the movement still slightly inhibited, and nods. “Once I can write again, I could make lists...? Maybe proper adult supply lists?”

Oliver brightens up again, chin lifting, and he nods with such a strange eagerness that Ev can’t help the tiny laugh the bubbles out of him. “Right! Proper adult supplies. Don’t ask me what those are, though. They trained us with a few things, guns and swords, but I guess they ran out of the ‘how to be an adult’ handbooks.”

“It’ll just be trial and error, maybe?” he says, smile widening, and Scarlett reaches up to tap his chin. “Which isn’t a bad thing? Just a thing.”

“Science-y process, right?” Scarlett asks, and Ev just beams. “Hey, right, you mentioned alchemy a ton in your last letter, tell us more about it? What sort of things d’you make?” 

He hesitates, for a moment. He doesn’t talk about his alchemy much. Sometimes his brothers will sit and listen to his rambling on the subject, until they grow bored and get up, and his mother only listened to as much as she needed to be able to discern just which textbooks he might need next. The genuine interest, the way both Scarlett and Oliver are looking at him, heads tilted in a way so similar that it almost makes him giggle -- it’s new.

Not a  _ bad  _ new, not necessarily. Just...new.

Scarlett brushes his arm again, and he lets himself relax, and begins to talk.

* * *

 

The science-y process of learning to live together, all three of them, does consist largely of trial and error.

Oliver, try as he might to drag himself up and balance along the edge of the table, still can’t move much without their help. Even being able to finally stand and move on his own using crutches took a few weeks of practice, of laps around the small room with Scarlett and Ev right behind him, just in case his arms gave out again and he collapsed. Which happened more than he liked.

Almost dying, Scarlett whispers to Ev one night when Oliver is asleep, is also a real bitch.

Her schedule is rarely fixed -- rather, her shifts come at strange times, with no rhyme or reason. Ev can’t calculate any sort of sense to it, any sort of pattern, until finally, when light is just barely starting to filter through the window and she’s stumbling in from her night shift, Scarlett mumbles something about the shifts being so erratic because crime in the city after the rebellion is, too.

She doesn’t like when Ev reads the paper. She doesn’t like him knowing more than she does, more than she wants him to. He waits until she’s out, and then he tries to make sense of everything through columns of tiny print.

Everett does meet Oliver’s grandmother, who is considerably taller than Oliver and considerably less grey -- all browns, instead, mousy and light and then dark -- and who also takes a look at the burns on his arms. She unwinds his bandages, slathers on burn cream, and swathes him in fresh ones instead. The wrappings get looser and looser until finally, they become unnecessary.

Sometimes, when he looks down and sees angry pink against brown, he wishes that they were.

And then there are the nights where he’ll wake up at the sound of thrashing or crying out, where Scarlett and Oliver are convinced that they’re back somewhere surrounded by death and noise and artillery fire, and it takes the other two hours upon hours to help them snap out of it. Sometimes, it’s Ev who wakes in the middle of the night, choking on smoke that isn’t there, and then it’s Scarlett and Oliver who sit up with him, and whisper to him that it isn’t real, that it’s safe, that he can breathe.

Slowly, Everett learns to breathe again.

He tugs down his sleeves to hide the scarring skin, and Oliver teaches him how to pin fabric discretely enough so that it’ll stay in place, but not poke out. On the day that he’s been living with them for a month, Scarlett gives him a vest that she’s sewn for him, looser in the chest. It fits and it’s his, and he cries. 

It’s trial and error, most of the time, and they forget the grocery lists more often than they remember them, but slowly, slowly, they’re learning.    
Ev feels like he’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW ALRIGHT OC DUMPS. kim kitkatkimble has inspired me so so much with everything oc related, including actually posting oc things, so i'm blaming it on her. xoxoxoxo. this will be just about everything that i write/haven't posted to tumblr, and there's going to be a lot of oc kidnapping. a lot of it. my friends have lovely characters. some chapters will be heavier than others but i'll add in the appropriate warnings for each chapter.


	2. Dad Science

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ev isn't very good at talking, but Elyon still manages to be very good at listening. (Alternatively, in which Elyon understands a lot of unsaid words.)
> 
> (heads up for some very brief mentions of unsafe binding and some implied awful parenting.)

Ev finds himself in Stormwind a bit more often than he ought to be.

Ought to be for work reasons, at least -- sometimes, he comes with a large bag that clanks against his thigh, filled with his own serums and some of Ben’s latest engineering projects to be sold at the auction house. Bombs. It’s a wonder that he hasn’t been stopped at the gates, yet, but apparently, the Stormwind Guard has other things to occupy their time.

He learns this from Elyon, mostly, because when Dan is away in Lakeshire or off with her Friend Rikke, Elyon’s clinic is always where he winds up. And when Elyon is busy with a patient or sorting salves, Ev empties some of the coin he just picked up from a successful auction into the donations jar. 

Elyon always immediately looks up and glares in his general direction, and demands that he take it out, but Ev never takes back all of the coin, like Elyon tells him to. Elyon does good work. He’s taken care of Ruth and Gen plenty of times, too, which is something that Ev is eternally grateful for. Getting any of the Levitts to a sort of clinic is a feat all on its own. Getting them to actually speak to a doctor? Herculean. 

But Elyon, even on his busiest days, always allows Ev in, which he’s also eternally grateful for. He loves Duskwood, but sometimes, he thinks best when he isn’t at home. He likes studying what Elyon does, what herbs he uses for which salve, how he grinds them or boils them depending on the certain case. 

Once, he perched up on the crate nearest to Flora while she was (petulantly) mixing up another salve at Elyon’s instruction, and flipped open his journal to conduct a Proper Scientific Interview. All he really gathered from it was that Peacebloom smells tangy, when it’s ground, and that it all turns to green and mush, but she pulled out the biggest words from her repertoire of vocabulary, and answered each of his questions with such a solemnity that Ev could barely hide a smile. 

He likes Elyon’s kids. 

Because hanging around Elyon’s clinic as much as he does, whether it’s to work on their next penny dreadful with a bit more liquor as an aid than there should be or just to scratch out possible formulas and combinations for serums while Elyon works, is a guarantee that he’ll meet all of Elyon’s kids. And there are many, many kids, some who stay and some who simply pass through.

Ev’s passing through is beginning to turn into staying, too. 

Elyon, as always, doesn’t close up until around evening, by which time Filipe has devised three new theories as to why Stormwind rarely sees snow, two of which involve radiation. Ev’s scratched out a chart of the evidence that he’s given. 

Sue him. He likes scientific conspiracies, and it’s nearly impossible not to encourage Filipe when he’s that excited over it. 

“How’s Gen’s arm doing?” Elyon asks, over from across the room where he’s reorganizing his supplies, and Ev glances up from the scientific atrocities in his journal. The last time he was here with Gen, it was for another check-up on the healing process of her arm. 

Ben ducked out of that one, citing work as the excuse -- which was true, because the faire was setting up and that meant that Ben would be spending the majority of the week on Darkmoon Island and attempting to herd Bessie away from the food stalls -- but Ev couldn’t miss the way he fidgeted around Elyon, even though they just spoke briefly, most of the time. 

“It’s a dad thing,” Ben had admitted once, after a day spent running around in Stormwind with a brief stop to Elyon’s clinic so Ev could drop off some herbs. They had made it back to the city gates, and Gen had drifted off in his arms. Ruth was preoccupied with fixing her blouse, but her head was tilted, still listening to their quiet conversation. “Not Elyon, not exactly. Just a -- just a dad thing.”

Ev didn’t press.  _ Dad things _ were still, as they always had been, off-limits most of the time.  _ Dad things _ sent Ben upstairs and ducking into the back room to try and fix another hole in the wall, or spray the mold again with the more-than-a-bit poisonous concoction that Ev had mixed up, or simply to hide. 

Sometimes, when Ev comes into the clinic, he just watches Elyon with his kids, his gentleness, and wonders how Ridley Levitt could still hold the title of “father” and be so, so different. 

“Gen’s doing alright,” he says, snapping himself back to attention, and he shuts his journal when a tiny hand tugs at his sleeve. It’s Jae, because it’s always Jae, and she likes to trace his scars. At first, it bothered him; Gen did the same, once, and it sent him reeling back three years to a burning boat and smoke in his already-weak lungs. 

Now, though, he gets it. Raised, wrinkled, pink skin is fascinating to toddlers, apparently. If he didn’t have the nightmares and that overwhelming sense of failure associated with them, Ev might not mind them as much. Maybe. 

“She’s singing with her class,” he adds, remembering, and both Elyon and Jae’s heads lift  a bit more. “In a few weeks. She’s already asked Dan to come see her, and she’s gotten this written invitation for Zuri, because she says that she’s practicing her spelling, and she told me to say that you’re welcome, too. But you don’t have to, you’re really busy, and she gets that, too. She also wanted me to ask you about how you test reflexes, and also why people get spots, because Eduard in her class did.” 

“I can sing,” Jae says, and Ev grins and ruffles her hair. She reaches up, stretches on her tiptoes, and he lowers his head down practically to his knees so that she can reach his head to return the gesture. 

Elyon turns, hands bare again, and the worry lines of his forehead disappear. He smiles. “I’m not sure that I can make it in person, but tell her that I’m wishing her luck. As for the other things, there’s a few ways to test reflexes, but if she’s trying to do that knee test, then tell her that you don’t use an actual hammer. Had a kid come in once who tried that.”

Ev cringes, and Elyon shakes his head, smile widening. “The spots are probably chickenpox. Real common in kids, hopefully she won’t get ‘em. It’s just viral. Are those all of her questions for today?”

Ev taps his pen against the cover of his journal -- which is so worn now that he probably ought to replace it, but he’s attached, damn it -- and then hands it over to Jae Yoon when she reaches. He brought his green pen today. Jae likes that one. “I think that’s it..? She’s still pretty set on being a medic like you are, but this list was smaller. She’s been trying to play doctor with Bessie.”

“How’s that working?” It’s genuine, because Elyon is genuine with children even when said children aren’t really present, but Ev doesn’t miss the slight twitch to his nose at the mention of Ben’s dog. Elyon and dogs do not get on well. 

“Bessie likes to leave the clinic at random times to try and get into the kitchen, so I don’t think it’s going as well as she’d like.” He guides Jae’s hand, the one holding the pen, away from her mouth. She makes a noise of protest, and dashes over to Elyon instead, who isn’t a pen-moving traitor. Ev is quiet then, a moment, and just watches as Elyon scoops Jae up before she’s even finished reaching up to tug at his coat. It’s instinct. A Dad Thing, probably. Dad science. 

“Hey, Elyon?” He tucks his legs up beneath him, sitting awkward and criss-crossed on the crate with this knees hanging over the side, and Elyon shifts Jae on his hip and tilts his head, waiting. Ev digs in his own coat pocket for a moment before finding another pen (blue, nearly out of ink) and flipping open his journal again. 

Elyon’s stance changes, at the familiar sound of Ev rustling pages; it becomes more open, more relaxed. He knows that sound is the precursor to questions, real ones, not just about herbs and salves. “Yeah?” 

“Did you always know that you were going to be a dad?” He taps his pen, and Elyon thinks a moment. Jae tugs at his hair. 

“I don’t know if ‘always’ is accurate, but yeah, I guess I knew pretty early. It just sort of happened. You don’t always plan it, but then you have people to take care of, y’know? Shit happens. You get that.”

Ev’s put his pen to the paper, but no words are flowing. He does get that. “But some people do plan to be fathers, or mothers, or parents, and they’re not nearly as good as you are. Not even close. And there are people who don’t plan either, but they are anyways? And they mess it up, too. You don’t mess it up.”

It’s not even intended to be a compliment; it’s just a fact. Elyon is a good person, and a good dad. Elyon listens, when he’s hung up on what to do for Ruth and Gen, when he and Ben are too nervous to ask elsewhere. Elyon teaches him things; how to make a small budget go a long way, how to mix up a draught to help with stomach aches out of only a few herbs, how to braid hair the nice way. Ev goes home and teaches Ben, who then will drop slightly burnt cookies at Elyon’s clinic, bright blue, and ducks out after a quiet “thank you.” 

“Every parent messes up, but not everyone’s really cut out for it,” Elyon says, slower than before. “Some people just don’t want it -- having kids, that responsibility. Some do, but they don’t know how. It’s all real circumstantial. Can I ask you a question?” 

“Alright.” He taps. Elyon bounces Jae, as he stands, and she lets out a delighted gasp mixed with a laugh. She likes the Bouncing Game. 

“Are you talking about a specific case here? Maybe more than one?”

Elyon doesn’t ask, “are you talking about your parents,” but he doesn’t need to. Ev’s of the blatantly obvious category, no matter how much he tries to pad his words, and he’s realized this. He’s lived with himself for twenty-three years. 

“Kind of,” he answers instead, and scoots back closer to the wall, so that his back is pressed nearly flat. His shoulders are hunched up. “Some parents plan, but then when there are things that they don’t really plan for, then it stops working. And they don’t -- they stop liking it so much.”

“Then that’s bullshit.” Elyon’s reply comes immediately, flatter than Ev had been expecting. He lifts his head up from the dots he’s making on the page. “You don’t quit being a good parent, just ‘cause it isn’t what you expected. It’s about being flexible. You have to be flexible, whatever it is. Like, you and Ben wouldn’t quit loving Ruth because she summons demons, right?”

“No! Never.” Ev twists the cap of his pen, and Elyon nods. “That’s impossible.” 

“And it should be, right? But some people don’t get that, and it’s not the kid’s fault, for any of it. But people who are gonna be assholes, people who don’t accept their kids for whatever it is, they’re the kind of people who shouldn’t be parents.” He sighs, and moves one hand up to briefly push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Look, there’s no magical formula for being a good parent. You just try your best, do your best to give them opportunities and love and all that, and you try not to fuck up. But fucking up’s inevitable. No parent’s perfect, but there’s a difference between making mistakes every now and then and being shitty.”

Ev rubs the scars along his left arm, where his sleeve is still pushed up, and he nods. “I think I understand.”

“Alright.” Elyon pauses a moment, to let Jae down, and then he moves over to stand next to Ev. He doesn’t sit, because Elyon never sits, but the same sentiment is there. His hand finds Ev’s shoulder. “You don’t have to explain, y’know, but look. I mean it when I say that it’s never a kid’s fault for a parent not being accepting. That means it’s not your fault, either.” 

He thinks about it a moment; Elyon never grimaced, when he casted, or questioned his pronouns, the pitch of his voice. Elyon never glared, never grumbled, when Ev came in with accidental self-inflicted burns. He didn’t question it, beyond the scope of medical ones, when Ev came in later than usual with heavy bruising around his ribs and a looser shirt than usual. 

Elyon’s always good to him, considerate, even when Ev can’t manage to be himself. 

He gets it, too, when both Ev and his pen are quiet, so Ev just leans his head against Elyon’s arm and gives a small nod. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> elyon is technically kitkatkimble's son, but i don't make the rules, so he's mine now and i'm not giving him back anytime soon. evelyon meiry are some good eggs


	3. A Few More Words than Usual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ben doesn't understand Elyon, or where to start, and Ev is at far more of a loss than he's comfortable with.
> 
> (Ben isn't exactly wordy, but warnings for heavily implied past child abuse/self harm -- it's still there.)

“Your knuckles are bruised.”

Ben finally glances up from the bits of wire he’s twisting together at the sound of Ev’s voice, and then drops his gaze again. The movements of his fingers become faster, more fidgety, more unsettled, and the twitch of his mouth begins to echo that of his hands.

Ev knows he’s chancing it, trying to get an answer. It’s a no-talking sort of night; he could see that the moment Ben stepped through the doorway, all in the hunch of his shoulders, the droop of his expression, the hesitance in his step entering even his own home. Ben didn’t need to explain; he never does. Ev’s learned it, learned the quirks and the tiniest indications -- the reactants, maybe, not quite the products yet -- of a Ben Mood Shift, even when Ben tries to hide it. Even when Ben just steps inside, kisses Ruth and Gen’s foreheads, brushes Ev’s hand, and starts talking, casual as ever. Elyon said to tell Ev thank you for the herbs. There was this really huge gryphon right outside the auction house that Bessie was convinced would like to play with her. Pestle’s Apothecary still has Love is in the Air decorations up.

 _Something isn’t right_ , however, he conveniently leaves out.

Yet Ev has learned that sometimes, it’s better to simply just let Ben be quiet. The two of them will sit in silence and read or work, and it still provides all the comfort either of them need. They’ve found that sort of balance.

But the shadows to his knuckles weren’t there this morning, and it’s -- concerning, to say the least. Every brief glance at them makes Ev’s stomach twist into knots, but he’s still drawing blanks when it comes to determining how to approach it, without scaring Ben off and making him clam up.

But something is wrong, or something _was_ wrong. Ben hasn’t hidden, no, not even now that Ruth and Gen are tucked into bed. (Or, correction, now that Gen is tucked into bed, and Ruth is pretending to be asleep and instead reading while hidden beside her bed under a blanket with her lamp. She always seems to forget that, well, lamps still glow through fabric.)

Still, some nights Ben will hold out, he’ll wait, and then after the girls are presumably asleep, the dam will break.

So Ev waited, the rest of the night, but nothing happened. Ben was -- is, because he still hasn’t answered, or even attempted past clearing his throat once -- just quiet.

“Can I see?” Ev tries again, careful to keep his voice slower than usual, softer. No, Ben isn’t hiding, but he’s retreated further into himself, in the same way he was when he first came home. The easy chatter he had kept up just an hour ago is gone. “Is that alright?”

Ben doesn’t answer, but he does set the wire down in his lap, and inches his hand a bit closer to Ev’s leg. It isn’t a significant difference -- the both of them trying to fit on the couch is quite the squished-together feat, because it’s bloody small and they both have limbs too long for their own good -- but it does allow Ev to get a closer look at the slight bruising. He tilts his head, and after Ben gives a tiny nod in answer to the unspoken question, he takes Ben’s hand in his own and traces a finger along the places where his skin has gone splotchy with small bits of purple.

“Sorry.” Ben clears his throat again, and his eyes dart away again. “It was -- stupid, really stupid, I shouldn’t’ve hit the floor or anything.”

So that’s where the bruises are from. “Are you bruised anywhere else..?”

“Maybe the back of my head a little. It’s fine, honest! Honest, it’s…” Ben laughs, too high and too quick, and then he gives a quick shake of his head. “Just me, just -- just my fault.”

“Alright.” He hesitates, because already it’s more explanation than he expected to get, but it still doesn’t really _explain_ anything. Ben isn’t clumsy; besides, even if he was, just an accidental trip and skid onto the ground still wouldn’t explain the injury to his knuckles, and then somehow to the back of his head. “Hey, Ben..?”

“Is Daniyah coming over anytime soon?” A half-question answered with a question. Ev just blinks.

“Um, maybe? I think we’d have to actually carry her inside before she ever went in herself, after Jinzahl. What does Dani have to do with this?”

Ben stares down at his hands a moment, and then gives Ev’s a small squeeze. He opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then--

“I didn’t mean to, honest, it just -- I was at the clinic and Elyon and Dan were there and Elyon hit her with his cane and he didn’t mean anything by it but it -- but it was still bad and I kinda -- I did a bad thing and I shouldn’t’ve and Elyon says it’s fine but it’s _not_ because I _yelled_ and Elyon was too nice about it and was -- was really, really nice and talked to me and he didn’t get mad but Dan got all quiet and they both saw and I didn’t want them to see, I didn’t mean for it to happen, honest, I didn’t, but--”

And the dam’s broken. Ev takes in a deep breath, and then grips his hand just a bit tighter. “Ben. Breathe.”

“Elyon says it’s okay to be upset but I didn’t mean to be upset like that!” Ben doesn’t breathe. At least, not slowly -- his breaths are becoming shallow, too quick, too hasty. It’s bordering dangerously close to the way he breathes during a panic attack. “I fucked up and it was in front of them and Alex and I don’t know how -- I don’t want them to -- I don’t want them to know and Elyon had a look like he did and he’s still so nice about it but I don’t want him to _know_.”

Oh.

Ev knows Ben. He’s learned Ben, through years of conversation and observation and just learning to look, knowing when to listen. He knows Ben, because he knows that he goes quiet and tries to distract himself in almost the exact same way.

But still, he can’t quite understand how it all shifts so quickly, how the brief movement of a cane can transform gentle Elyon into a ghost with alcohol on his breath and hands that makes Ben hate his own. He still can’t quite piece together how the shift can be so sudden, where Ben goes from quiet, wide-eyed worry to rocking back and forth in the corner with his hands over his ears, the same way Gen used to during a tantrum. He’s still learning, he still can’t quite understand, but--

But Ben is talking, actually talking, and he still really needs to breathe before he sends himself into another panic.

“Ben.” His own voice comes out in a rush, and Ev forces himself to follow his own instructions. “Slow down a bit..? Slow down. Wait, alright, so...Elyon hit Dani and it scared you. That was it.”

After that, past that point -- Ev glances back down at the bruising along Ben’s knuckles and remembers the first time Ben saw a father swat at his son’s arm in the city, the sobbing and the hiding and the way his hands refused to loosen from fists, and he thinks that he can fill in the blanks.

Ben nods, and ducks his chin. “It -- Ev, I, it, um -- it was a bad one.”

“But you said that Elyon talked to you about it?”

“Yeah. He did.” The wire makes a reappearance in Ben’s free hand. “He was really understanding..? He said not to apologize, but I -- I really think that I still owe him a few thousand apologies. He said he wanted me to start coming by more often, for tea, and I want to, honest, but…”

He’s quiet a moment, and Ev waits. Stringing together explanations is difficult, more difficult than it should be. He gets that much, at least.

“I like Elyon. He’s kind and patient and he’s good with his kids, so good. But he’s real scary, ‘cause of all that. And I think I can -- I want to trust him again, or just, y’know, start to in the first place. But he’s got questions, and Dan, I know that they -- I know they do, and I don’t want to…”

“Not yet?” Not everyone has a Ruth and a Gen to learn from, to draw the pieces from and put together explanations to the bruises he saw so long ago, the jumpiness, the -- to put together the pieces to figuring out Ben.

He’s still working on it.

“Not yet,” Ben echoes, voice quieter than before, and his head drops down to rest against Ev’s own. “I’m sorry that--”

“You’re alright.” He closes his eyes. “You’ll be alright. Really, it will. I promise. It’s -- Elyon’s safe. He’s a good place to start, for trying to trust someone..? Elyon isn’t going to hurt you, not ever, I promise.”

“Yeah. He won’t, I-I -- yeah. He won’t.” There’s a quiet clink of wire tapping against wire, and then Ben lets out a shaky breath. “Hey, Ev?”

“Yes?”

“I -- I do want to tell you. I mean -- more, for real. About all of it. Honestly, I do, it’s just the...it’s not exactly something that I can underline in a book and still have it make sense? And even when I try to say it, even if I think that I might be able to, I can’t again. It’s -- yeah. Yeah.” Ben lets the wire fall back down into his lap, and moves his hand up to hide his face. “Still need to figure that out. The explaining bit.”

“I can wait.” And he means it. He’ll wait. They’re not running anymore, not the way they used to, not from disaster after disaster and from town to town. “And Elyon, and Dan -- they’ll wait too. I know they will. We’ve got time.”

“Okay. I -- thanks. Thank you.” His hand drops, and then his head, down so that his face is hidden in the crook of Ev’s neck, right where his vest meets his shirt. “Thanks.”

Ev tilts his head down, to knock gently against Ben’s own, and then they’re quiet. They’re quiet for so long, and Ben’s breathing is finally regulated again, so soft that for a moment Ev starts to wonder if he’s fallen asleep.

Staying where they are now doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, now that he thinks about it. Less moving. It’s late. Ben’s alright. Ben’s doing alright, he’s sleepy and safe and things are better--

“His name was Ridley.”

Ev lifts his head up, at the sudden sound of Ben’s voice. The words are still quiet, sleepy, almost enough to seem innocuous, but Ev knows that name. He knows it, he knows more than just the man’s name, sometimes more than he wishes Ruth and Gen knew, because they’re the only ones who ever speak of him.

“My father. His name was Ridley.” Ben draws away, reaching to pull at his sleeves and wring his hands. “Just so you--”

Ev pulls him back into a tight hug, and then Ben’s face is hidden back in the fabric of his vest. This time, they only to move to shift into an awkward half-reclined position on the couch, one just a bit easier to sleep in. They’re quiet.

They’re quiet, for now, at least, because Ben knows that he can’t elaborate further, not tonight, but he’s broached it. Ev knows most of it. Ev knows the pieces, he knows the story, he knows what Ben’s father did, what sends Ben hiding in closets and beneath the bed. He knows so much more than just a name, just a few letters, just two syllables.

But now, it’s a name that Ben told him, not one that Ev found on his own. It’s information that was given, not stitched together with hesitant hands.

It’s a name, and it’s a start, and if the way Ben’s voice trembled just speaking his father’s name aloud gives any more insight--

He hasn’t even scratched the surface of  everything that he means to tell. It’s a start. It’s a name. It’s four words more than Ben has ever shared before.

But it’s not even a scratch.

The sudden, quiet fear that weighs down on Ev’s chest, stone and cold, has him holding Ben even tighter than before.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the direct aftermath of this thread, over on tumblr: http://damn-it-daniyah.tumblr.com/tagged/concerto-in-A-flat-major/chrono. i'm still dying and quite frankly so is ben.


	4. Is "Harrison Jones Wannabe" an Acceptable Major?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jai Cadbury is a lot of things. "Actually confident" is, well, maybe not one of them, except he supposes that "weirdly perceptive" is accurate when you're referring to his best friend.

Jai is, without contest, the most uncool person he knows.

Sure, he’s mastered the art of appearing cool, or like Hot Shit at the very least; he’s memorized all the right moments to flick his hair out of his face or flash a grin for no apparent reason the same way that he’s memorized the differences in the carvings of Mogu and Tol’vir runes. When it comes to studying, he might have fallen off the wagon a bit, but what he lacks in smarts he makes up for in smirks. He acts cool, at least, and he’s annoying about it.

Jai’s annoying about everything.

He knows this, just as well as he knows that no matter how hard he studies, no matter how many all-nighter cram sessions he pulls with Miyu or hours he puts into the independent research he does, that he’s never going to amount to anything more than a Harrison Jones wannabe.

Putting that crushing feeling of doubt into words is even more impossible than transforming his faking it into making it, and even more so after completing an exam that -- in scientific terms -- went down the shitter. So instead, he hefts his bag of books and scrolls further up on his shoulder, and leans into Miyu as their feet trace the familiar way back toward the Great Forge.

Leaning into Miyu is quite possibly a bad idea, considering that even with their heeled boots on, the top of their head maybe reaches Jai’s hip at best, and Jai really isn’t a tall man. He veers on the spindly side of slight, an awkward mash-up of human and elven genes and all the other things that he never understood when he studied biology. He’s barely skirting the hundred-and-five pound mark, but even then his weight is enough to send Miyu reeling and swearing at him.

He forgets how small they are, still. They never really mind.

“It was Mogu,” they say, before Jai can even open his mouth to complain. “Mogu, Draenei, Nerubian, in that order.”

“How’d you know it was the first set that threw me off?”

“You got this look of utter horror. Subtlety, Jai, I ought to introduce you sometime.” As always, their voice is a chirp, but there’s an extra spring to their tone that accompanies the joke. He rolls his eyes, as he does, and then leans an elbow down atop their head. Their ponytail protests, and crunches in a mess of green and blue, and Jai resolves to introduce them to the practice of less hairspray sometime.

“I’m gonna get it next time,” he says, more because that’s what a disheartened student ought to say than because he’s actually convinced. His academic career is one botched exam and professor rubbing their temples while they speak to him after another. “If it was more field work and less, y’know, written exams…”

“You panic on the spot.” Miyu shrugs, and they turn a corner and duck through the next tunnel. Jai nods, and then busies himself with pushing his sleeves up and folding them into something presentable and a little less stifling. Ironforge is, after a few years of studying in Darnassus, hotter than he’d prefer.

He’s used to it enough by now, but the heat still pricks and he still runs hot. In the literal sense, as in his body temperature, not his looks. Although he does really wish that it were the latter.

“You’ve taken a lot of exams.” They sail on, well-used to his tendency to get distracted, and he nods a bit more sheepishly. “This one’s no different, right?”

“‘Zactly, which is why I chunked it. You know I haven’t got high marks on any exam this year? The whole year.” He shoves a hand into his pocket, all habit, and shakes his head. His hair shakes with the motion. It’s kind of annoying. “But it’s not like I can say anything about it. You know Nitin.”

Miyu gives their own chin a flick upward, to send their hair flying back out of their face. It crashes back down. They click their tongue, and pause to dig a pin out of their pocket and fiddle with their hair. “I do. And can I tell you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Nitin isn’t going to care. He’s not going to think badly of you for struggling a bit in your classes. ‘Sides, you do well with fieldwork, and you care. That’s what matters, not that you freeze up during the actual tests.”

He considers that a moment, and shifts his shoulder again to adjust the position of his bag. He usually loves the weight of the books in his satchel; he loves their contents and he loves simply having them and knowing that they’re there. Today, they feel far too heavy. The pages become stone, statue fragments that he has to lug around. “Loving archaeology doesn’t get me good marks, and it doesn’t make me not stupid compared to Nitin. And the rest of my brothers.”

“You know that you aren’t stupid.” Their voice is tinny, it always is, but the underlayer has become steel. Miyu means what they say. Jai is terrible with doing the same, but he can admire it in them, even if he doesn’t necessarily agree with what they’re saying.

“I hope I’m not stupid.”

“You know that you aren’t.”

The dim light of the wide tunnel gives way to the roar and the flash of the Great Forge, and Jai blinks reflexively. Already, sweat is starting to bead against his forehead. He stays quiet a moment, free hand fidgeting along the fabric of his kurta. It’s wearing thin, which shouldn’t be a surprise; it was Rasik’s. Still, he keeps it, and he wears it as a sort of good luck charm.

Like on exam days. Where, each time, he probably makes Rasik roll in his grave, because he messes up that badly.

It’s a stupid thought. It still makes a lump rise in his throat.we

He swallows it down, and forces his expression back into something nonchalant, something easy, and glances back to Miyu. They tilt their head at him. “Maybe I’m not stupid. But it feels that way, a lot of the time.”

“Normal feeling,” they reply, one hand reaching up to brush over his knuckles in something meant to be comforting. Their hands are always freezing, and Jai will always joke that it’s because Miyu is a frost mage and never told him.

(He used to joke around by saying that, at least, until one morning he came back to their apartment a bit earlier than usual from the library and caught more than a glimpse of them hunched over a book with an icy mist flitting in and out between their fingers. He slipped back out before he had entirely opened the door. If they had meant for him to know, they would have said something. He wouldn’t ask until they told.)

“Is it?” He asks, partially sincere and partially irritated at himself for letting his thoughts go off into another tangent. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that he does so poorly in class. His focus comes and goes as frequently as Anit’s middle finger rises up and down. It’s a hopeless case. “I’m serious. Is it..? You don’t seem like you ever worry.”

“I wait to panic until you’re out of the house, as a general rule.” Miyu’s hand comes to rest on his arm, and he cracks a small, half smile. It would be a casual motion if it wasn’t such a reach for them; now, it’s actually oddly heartwarming. “Sure I do. You know that this is my fourth major I’ve gone into, right?”

“I...wait, yeah, I think I do. Maths, business, history, now archaeology.”

“Correct.” Another tiny nod, birdlike in the odd way that Miyu always manages. They push their oversized glasses back up the bridge of their nose, and hum. “This is your second.”

“Second if you count basic courses, and three weeks of law studies.” Jai makes a face just at the thought. “But that’s not -- I don’t understand your point. I’m sorry. What do you mean?”

“I mean that not everybody knows what they’re doing, one hundred percent of the time. I sure as fel don’t. But, see, that doesn’t really matter so long as you keep on doing stuff, don’t give up, blah blah, so on and so forth.” Miyu kicks a pebble, and flashes him a beam. The corners of Jai’s mouth stretch up into something that resembles a smile a bit more. “Look, you’ll be fine, you’ve been fine for -- what, three years?”

“Three years,” he repeats, and tosses his head back, all dramatic resignation. “Only five left to go.”

“Chin down, Jai,” they chirp, and he snorts, forgetting that he has a Hot Shit image to keep up for just a moment. “Really, chin down, I can see up your nostrils and they’re dreadful. Utterly disgusting. I see hair, or possibly snot. Poor lighting. Impossible to tell.”

“You’re so mean to me,” he says, but leans his arm back against the top of their head in a silent ‘thank you,’ and they snicker.

“Come with me to the auction house? There’s a new order of runes coming in, if I’m not mistaken, and I don’t care if they’re modern. I want to crack them open geode style. You’re welcome to join me in that, too, if you’re not too busy going on dates.”

Jai just grins and nods, because they know as well as he does that Dates are a thing that never and likely will never happen for him. They haven’t gotten to do any fieldwork for class lately, and he’s itching to get his hands back on his pick, even if just to waste money and perfectly good runes for Miyu reasons that will never make sense to him. “I might be able to free up my schedule for you, just a bit. I can fit you in sometime around now and the rest of the day, but you’ll have to excuse me for an obligatory mourning nap.”

“Be awake soon enough so you can help me dye my hair again later.”

Jai shudders, but shakes them companionably anyways. Miyu’s good at cheering him up. Always has been.

Even if they’re still trying to convince him to go purple with his hair, which is, no contest, the worst idea he’s ever heard. Ever. Still, for the sake of being a Good Friend, he might finally give in and let them do a small streak. Maybe.

It’s a big maybe, but so are most things with Jai, so he’s not too worried about it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the result of exam stress + playing around a lot more with ev's brothers, who are ridiculously fun to write. they're all absolutely terrible and i really need to do more with them


End file.
